The start of the rainy season in Freetown doesn't dampen the vibrancy of the city. Blue, pink and green houses line its narrow winding roads. Street sellers wrapped in brightly printed cloth swarm through the neverending traffic. People are trying to move on from the horrors of Sierra Leone's civil war. Some can even forgive, but very few can forget, the death and devastation of one of the most brutal conflicts in Africa.

"I wasn't a beggar before. Now I have come to be a beggar. Just to get food for my children, to send them to school," says Kadiatu Fofana, who lives with a constant reminder of the atrocities committed in the war. She sits outside her concrete shack in a wheelchair, having lost both her legs after an attack by the notorious Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.

They came to her village in 1999. As she ran, they started hacking at her legs with machetes. Both legs had to be amputated in hospital.

Between 1991 and 2002, at least 50,000 people were killed across the country, thousands more were mutilated and 2 million displaced from their homes – close to half the population.

For many, there is one man they hold responsible – Charles Taylor, former president of neighbouring Liberia. The first African head of state to be tried in an international court, Taylor will on Thursday hear the verdict of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in his five-year trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, sexual slavery and using child soldiers.

Edward Conteh, another of Sierra Leone's amputees who lost his left arm just below the elbow to an RUF axe, wants Taylor punished. "He should never be free to breathe the free air that we breathe again. He once told Sierra Leoneans that we are going to taste the bitterness of war, so Charles Taylor should taste the bitterness of the law."

Taylor is alleged to have said Sierra Leone would "taste the bitterness of war" in an interview with the BBC in 1990. A year later, war came to Sierra Leone – and the RUF entered from Liberia. Taylor is accused of funding and supporting the rebels. But not everyone holds Taylor responsible for the crimes in Sierra Leone and there is a widespread feeling that the court did not pursue all those involved.

Ansumana Fowai, a former RUF fighter living in Freetown, believes there are Sierra Leoneans who have escaped justice for crimes committed in their own country. "Why was Pa Kabbah left out of the trial? Instead they indicted Charles Taylor, while we have people we see every day [in Sierra Leone] who committed atrocities."

'Pa' Kabbah is former president Tejan Kabbah, who was head of state between 1996 and 2007. It was Kabbah who asked the international community for a war crimes tribunal when peace finally came to Sierra Leone. Thirteen people, including Taylor, were indicted. Nine have already been convicted and jailed. But three of the top names, including the RUF leader Foday Sankoh, died before standing trial. Johnny Paul Koroma, leader of another rebel faction, is still missing. That leaves Taylor, who was held in 2006 and shipped to The Hague, as the only big name in the dock. Many lower-ranking commanders were left out of the prosecution.

Peter Andersen, head of public affairs at the Special Court in Freetown, says prosecutors had to draw the line somewhere on who to bring to trial. "The mandate was to try those only who bore the greatest responsibility," he says. "And that means that a lot of the mid-level commanders, the people who noticeably had blood on their hands, escaped from the court. No tribunal can go after everybody. At some point, the country has to move on."

The Sierra Leonean government believes the trial has brought lasting benefits to the country, particularly in strengthening the judicial system. "Justice has been delivered," says Frank Karbo, the justice minister. "The trials have also heightened awareness that you cannot get away with impunity. It was essential that certain persons be taken out of circulation, and that has been done."

Five hours east of Freetown, heading towards Liberia, the Taylor trial seems to figure little in people's minds. The small, dusty town of Kenema looks like any other in Sierra Leone, until you notice the diamond shops. They are everywhere. Dozens of beautifully hand-painted pictures of diamonds decorate wall after wall. Shop owners sit on their porches waiting for their next customer, the windows behind them barred with thick steel. At the bus station, a man clutching two grubby stones asks if anyone thinks they are diamonds.

Kenema is the centre of Sierra Leone's diamond business, a trade at the heart of the allegations against Taylor, who is accused of fuelling the war by selling the rebels weapons and ammunition in exchange for blood diamonds. During the civil war, control of the diamond mines was viciously fought over. Children, women and men were forced to work in the mines in appalling conditions. Yet few details of Taylor's trial seem to have reached this far out of Freetown.

The closer you get to Liberia, the more opinions change. The Taylor family still has a significant presence in the country, where his former wife is a state senator.

"I still don't see the connection of how he could be held responsible for those things done in Sierra Leone when they were actually done by Sierra Leonean armed forces," Jewel Howard Taylor says in her office in Liberia's parliament building. The wall behind her is lined with mementoes from her time as first lady – an honorary plaque from the Liberian national football team, a signed photograph of her with Hillary Clinton and a framed photo of the Taylors with former French president Jacques Chirac.

"I don't think he should be held responsible for problems in Sierra Leone. However, if you talk about the crisis in Liberia, then that's a different story," says Taylor.

Liberia has its own history of war. For 14 years, the country was in an almost permanent state of fighting, with atrocities like those committed in Sierra Leone. War began in 1989 when Taylor led a rebel army to oust the then president, Samuel Doe. In 1997, Taylor was elected as head of state but, within a few years, new groups of rebels were trying to overthrow him. He was forced in to exile in Nigeria in 2003.

As part of its peace process, Liberia chose to have a truth and reconciliation commission, rather than a war crimes tribunal. "I would hate to see a war crimes tribunal brought to Liberia," says Jewel Taylor. "It will not reconcile us. It will not bring back the past. It will not pay for the destruction of our nation, and it will definitely not put back the fabric of our country that has been destroyed as a result of the war."

A former warlord whose links to Liberia's violent past many cannot ignore ran for president in recent elections. Prince Johnson fought alongside Charles Taylor in 1989 before forming a rival force. He ordered the torture and execution of Doe in 1990 – a video showing Johnson relaxing in a chair with a beer while his men slice Doe's ear off is on YouTube.

"Everyone in life has a past. No one will ever rejoice even if you kill your enemy, because we are all Liberian, one blood. It is unfortunate for political power we had to fight ourselves. Definitely, it is regrettable," he says, from his home in Monrovia.

He chastises his former comrade. "It's pathetic that he [Taylor] got himself into what he's into. I would have focused on Liberia and developed my country after becoming president rather than promoting a war in another country," he says, adding, "if it is true."

Johnson did not make it to the second round of voting in the elections. Taylor, however, still has strong support in Liberia. He was seen as a freedom fighter in 1989, liberating the country from the corrupt and violent rule of Doe. Despite the years of conflict that followed, many still see him a strong figurehead.

"We want him to come back to Liberia," says Jacob Anjai, breaking off from a game of Scrabble in one of Monrovia's open-air cafes, where people gather to talk politics and play board games.

If Taylor ever returned and stood for president, would they vote for him? About half the customers said they would. "We love him. Even if he stands tomorrow to be president of this nation, I know we will vote for him and he will be victorious," says Anjai.

That neither Johnson nor Taylor have been held to account for atrocities committed in Liberia, however, leaves many people with a bitter taste in their mouth.

Visible signs of Liberia's past are falling away in Monrovia, as bombed-out, bullet-ridden buildings are replaced. The presidential elections in November gave Nobel prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf a second term by Liberians wanting continued peace and development.

Most people have no desire to return to conflict and have spent the years while Taylor has been on trial trying to rebuild their lives. Both Sierra Leone and Liberia are still desperately poverty-stricken, and daily survival can seem more important than justice.

Fofana, sitting in her wheelchair sheltering from the sun in Grafton, knows her life will remain on the breadline, whatever the verdict. "They could jail him for 100 years and it wouldn't make a difference," she says. "I still need to find food for my family."